Seriously, is there anything that says “we have zombies” more than the CDC denying we have zombies? The web chatter started in earnest last weekend, when a gruesome story out of Florida went viral, in which an apparently psychotic man attacked another, chewing the second’s face for nearly twenty minutes before police were forced to fire off a full clip at the assailant, eventually killing him.

(It was reported that the attacker carried on chewing his victim’s flesh after having been shot, which is a behavior many associate with zombie tropes on TV and in film.) But it wasn’t just the Florida face-chewing incident that got web searchers buzzing. Another incident involved a doctor who began spitting blood at arresting officers during a traffic stop and was difficult to subdue afterwards at the hospital, and a few incidents in which hazmat teams were dispatched to schools after reports of unexplainable rashes popping up among large numbers of students.

And now the Centers For Disease Control- also known as the initial villains and/or the agency of last resort in nearly every zombie apocalypse tale- is acknowledging the rumors, saying in an email to HuffPo that the dead have not begun to walk, no matter what you may be reading on the interwebs. The agency has been known to use zombie media to spread disaster awareness (such as in this list of rules from The Walking Dead), but the CDC maintains plausible deniability when it comes to the recent spate of walker-like incidents:

“CDC does not know of a virus or condition that would reanimate the dead (or one that would present zombie-like symptoms),” wrote agency spokesman David Daigle in an email to The Huffington Post.

But you know, just in case, the CDC who equivocally says there are no zombies would also like to remind you to stock up on gas, get a first aid kit and make sure your water is clean.